I wrote this up for a couple other sites, but thought I would share here as well. I know you may not be able to answer my questions, but I'll include them in case someone can.

Davide Pedersoli AN IX .69 Caliber
My initial impressions was that this was a well built pistol. It is very heavy compared to the modern semi automatic pistols I am used too. The lack of sights is a neat novelty, you'll notice it as soon as you pick up the pistol. I went ahead and made some pure lead balls of .66 caliber with a Lyman bullet mold. I had some difficulty in making the balls wrinkle free, but I quickly discovered that if I held the mold directly up to the pour spout on the melter that I would get wrinkle free balls (that just sounded weird :D ).

Materials Used
For this pistol I used Tom Fuller English flints (5/8"), along with some leather to help keep them in. For my first 10 or so shots I used a cotton cleaning patch coated in Crisco to help cut down on fouling and keep the ball from rolling out of the barrel. After those first 10, I shot the balls bare with a nice coating of Crisco. Main charge was FFG Goex (~35 grains), with a prime of 4 grains FFFFG. FFG Goex did work as prime. I believe I will stick to FFG as prime in the future because it will help simplify things.

Range Report
My brother and I fired exactly 40 rounds that day. We did most of our shooting at a mere 20 feet. Both my brother and I are experienced pistol shooters. We know the ins and outs of trigger control and sight alignment. However, we had tremendous difficulty in shooting this pistol accurately. The lack of sights was very unusual for us and simply "pointing" it did not result in very good groups at 20 feet. We also had the misfortune and ignorance to prop our target in front of a medium sized oak tree :eek: . After 3 shots we realized our error; the pistol rounds were literally bouncing off the tree! We relocated our target, luckily escaping injury.

Recoil was very mild even with 35 grains of FFG powder. We have shot an Armi Sport 1861 (~60 grains FFG 500 grain minie ball) and one thing we have discovered is that these "old" guns are heavy and do not kick much. After around 15 or so shots we started getting the dreaded miss-fires. We have no idea how to re-knapp the flints so we just kept shooting. The sparks created by the flint gradually kept getting fewer and fewer. Towards the end of the 40 rounds, we would have to fire the pistol up to three times to achieve ignition. We ended up using the same 5/8" Tom Fuller English flint for the whole day. When we got home we scrapped it.

Questions:

Is 5/8" the optimial size flint to use?
The frizzen has light gouges in it, my finger nail can get caught on them, is this normal?
Any problems with using FFG as prime?
Does anyone know of any good books or places where I can learn more about this pistol?

Overall it is a fun pistol to shoot and we had an enjoyable time trying to get some neat pictures. Here are some for your enjoyment: